Iggy & the Stooges - "Raw Power Live: In the Hands of the Fans" DVD Review (MVD)

At 63, the “world’s forgotten boy” hasn’t slowed down. On Tuesday, MVD Entertainment will release Iggy and the Stooges' "Raw Power Live: In The Hands Of The Fans" on DVD and Blu-Ray. The video captures Iggy & the Stooges performing their classic album Raw Power along with tracks from the first two Stooges’ albums and Kill City at the All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival on Friday, September 3, 2010.

I saw The Stooges at Roseland Ballroom on their first reunion tour. When Iggy jumped into the crowd and seemed to be heading right for me, I quickly stepped to the side as Iggy had an aura of frenetic unpredictableness which the cameras do a nice job of capturing on this disc. The concept behind this first “In The Hands Of The Fans” disc is that six fans were selected to film the concert and, following the performance, the fans meet and interview the band. The various camera angles do a great job of capturing the intensity of The Stooges’ performance and it gives the user the sense of almost being part of the crowd.

The half-naked and heavily muscled Iggy is backed by (retired Sony VP – how that for a career change?) James Williamson, whose licks sounds tighter than they did back in 1973, gunslinger bassist Mike Watt and the ever-steady Rock Action. This show isn’t Iggy and a backing band as return of James Williamson adds a darker tone to the band’s music which the rhythm section then locks on to. With saxophonist Steve Mackay, the band adds some of the free-form freak-out of the early Stooges to songs like "1970 (I Feel Alright)" and "Night Theme". The band plays with the energy that defies their age and their performance is on fire.

Continuing in his role as ‘chief instigator’, Iggy called out for dancers, spazzers and freaks and brought members of the audience on stage to dance and pogo while the band played “Shake Appeal” and he was in the crowd at the end of the band’s set.



Raw Power Live Track List
Raw Power
Search and Destroy
Gimme Danger
Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell
Shake Appeal
I Need Somebody
Penetration
Death Trip
1970 (I Feel Alright)
Night Theme
Beyond the Law
I Got A Right
I Wanna Be Your Dog
Open Up & Bleed
Fun House
No Fun

Some of the bonus features include the original YouTube videos that the six fans who filmed the concert submitted along the post-show Q&A that these fans had with the band.



In an interview earlier this year with The Guardian, Iggy had the following to say on the Raw Power tour: "All we're doing now is finishing off a job…[a]nd I'm pleased to report that James has now learned to use his intelligence in balance with his more impulsive, aggressive side."

Links:
Iggy Pop

Iggy & the Stooges - "Raw Power Live: In the Hands of the Fans" CD Review (MVD)

On Friday, Sept. 3rd last year, Iggy & the Stooges (featuring James Williamson on guitar) performed 1973's Raw Power in its entirety at All Tomorrow's Parties New York. A live document of this show, Raw Power Live: In the Hands of the Fans, is coming out next month as a limited edition 180 gram vinyl release for Record Store Day 2011.

"Getting this top-notch performance of the entire Raw Power album by The Stooges realized a life long dream," said Iggy Pop "This shit really sizzles and we are so obviously a crack band in a class of our own."



Billboard Magazine had the following to say about The Stooges' performance: "[a]s the pretty clear main attraction, Iggy and the Stooges granted a predictably explosive show." This nine track release captures the Raw Power portion of the set along with "I Got A Right" and the band sounds on fire. This disc is a good companion piece to the "Live at Richards" bonus disc that came out with the deluxe reissue of Raw Power. The original Raw Power lineup always sounded like an impending train wreck that somehow managed to avoid total collapse. Now almost 40 years later, the dirty talk and the sloppiness is gone, but Iggy and crew still play with the intensity of their youth.

I have about a dozen Iggy live discs (both solo and with The Stooges) and this one's a keeper. The disc runs just shy of 40 minutes and below is the track list. (Note: the band did not play the Raw Power album in its original sequence)
- Raw Power
- Search and Destroy
- Gimmie Danger
- Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell
- Shake Appeal
- I Need Somebody
- Penetration
- Death Trip
- I Got A Right

Links:
Iggy & the Stooges

The Stooges - "You Don't Want My Name, You Want My Action" CD Review (Easy Action)

This release has been out since last year but I finally got around to picking up a copy. I've bought more than enough dodgy Stooges releases over the last twenty year so I was hesitant to pick up yet another one. Now that I've spent some time with this set, the key question that I'll try to answer with this review is whether both the casual Stooges fan and the Stooges/Iggy collector would find value in this 4-disc collection.

You have to wonder what The Stooges were thinking (which may be an oxymoron) - roughly a year after the release of Funhouse, The Stooges went out on the road playing a set composed entirely of unreleased songs. Additionally, this lineup - which featured both Ron Asheton and James Williamson on guitar and Jimmy Recca on bass - only held together through this tour. Given this, most Stooges collectors are likely to already have this set. The sticking point for me was the unknown sound quality. Easy Action's site states in large type "These recordings are Audience recordings!". Having had a completely unlistenable recording of the show at The Factory (aka Kiel Auditorium) for years along with the average sounding Wampler Lake show, I was suspicious.

After giving this set a few spins, the bottom-line is that the sound quality is decent - not stellar, but decent all the same. The bar that I've set for audience recordings is whether the sound quality is something that you can play at a party and let the background noise and chatter "blur" any of the recording's minor imperfections. None of the four shows on this set hit this bar - all of the recordings require a somewhat quiet environment and active listening to appreciate the power of this lineup.

The set list is pretty much the same across all four shows:
- "I Got A Right",
- "You Don't Want My Name",
- "Fresh Rag",
- "Dead Body / Who Do You Love",
- "Big Time Bum" and
- "Do You Want My Love".

The first night (May 14, 1971) at the The Electric Factory also includes Iggy singing solo "The Shadow Of Your Smile" and the full band performance of "The Children of the Night".

Starting with Disc 1 and 2, both Electric Factory recording are guitar-heavy and this drowns out the bass, drums and most of Iggy's vocals. The intertwining lead guitars though give a good sense of the power of these songs. Moving on to Disc 3, the sound quality of The Factory show (the final live show with this lineup) is surprisingly good in comparison to the multi-generation unlistenable mess the was documented on Live '71. The bottom end of the range is missing but Iggy's vocals are reasonably clear. The final disc contains the first show of the tour, recorded in Detroit in April '71. This recording starts out rather rough but clears up by the third song and ends up being close in quality to The Factory show. This disc is rounded out by a post-split contractual obligation show at Wampler's Lake (recorded on July 24, 1971) where the lineup included just Ron, Scott, Jimmy with a vocalist recruited from the audience.

The sound quality of this set is going to scare away casual fans but collectors are going to want to have this set simply because there are no other decent recording of these songs or this lineup. While I'm unlikely to listen to this set often, it has a permanent home in my collection.

Links:
Iggy & The Stooges

Legal Music Downloads - TV on The Radio, Cold War Kids and Iggy (Pop) & The Stooges

I have been meaning to clear off my iPod and finally got around to listening to a number of the podcasts that I had downloaded.

The first podcast is TV on the Radio live on AOL's The Interface. The band's set was recorded in November of last year (2006) and they sound great!! They play three songs live in the studio and really show how far they have matured in both musicianship and songwriting since their debut. The band also gives a short interview and, amusingly, David Sitek grumping about the leak of the Cookie Mountain demos sounds somewhat like the Lars Ulrich/Napster wars (see below).


Tracks played are "Wash the Day", "Young Liars" and "Province". This is well worth the download.


The second podcast is The Cold War Kids live on KEXP's mid-morning show. As the only thing that I have previously heard by The Cold War Kids is Nathan Willet's solo set on The Interface, I don't have much of a point of comparison. I like the songs with the full band much better than Willet solo but, all-in-all, I don't hear what all the hype is about.

The last podcast is a twenty-minute set by Iggy & The Stooges recorded live at SXSW on March 16, 2007. This is a must for any Iggy fan as it features the reunited Stooges playing four cuts from The Weirdness. The tracks are "Trollin'", Interview with Iggy, "ATM", "My Idea of Fun" and "She Took My Money".

Iggy and The Stooges Live in the Studio on the NY Times Website

There is a pretty cool five minute video interview with Iggy and the Asheton brothers about the making of the new CD on the NY Times website today. It doesn't look like I can post a direct link so the clip is in the Video section, which is halfway down the left side of the page.

Weirdness, the Stooges first new CD since 1973's Raw Power will be released by Virgin Records on March 20th. The Stooges' are playing NYC on April 9th with a show at The United Palace Theatre.